Personally, I wouldn’t think of anything other than WhatsApp to stay in touch with my gang of friends. Interestingly, there was once when WhatsApp was given the boot by Apple, people had to look for alternatives. I wasn’t one of them, but I’ve since been keeping my radar open for a good alternative just in case apocalypse is here.

WhatsApp hasn’t got very many alternatives that perform just as good. No doubt there are other services which are great, but the reach and popularity of WhatsApp is only equaled by, say, Viber.

So today, what we’ll do is take a look at some really good alternatives that you and your friends can migrate to just in case WhatsApp doesn’t work out well.

Before that, these are the things we’re looking at in alternatives:

Multi-platform compatibility like WhatsApp

Rich media exchange (audio, video etc.)

Easy “favoriting” options

Smooth contact sync

All the interface goodies: emoticons

Best Alternatives to WhatsApp for iPhone and iPod Touch:

1. Telegram Messenger

I am tempted to call Telegram for iPhone a WhatsApp-clone with one characteristic feature: speed. Telegram is one of the best WhatsApp alternatives specifically because it looks and works in the same way. Sure it does have some limitations (there’s no audio-note feature, for instance) but it’s slick. The app sends messages through decentralized servers (picking the one closest to you) which makes it process messages faster.

WeChat is a promising young chat client from none other than the Chinese shores of Tencent aimed at connecting millions of people. Not so surprisingly, their popularity has soared over the period and – thanks largely to the sensible design and development – WeChat does stand out as a good alternative provided you can get your friends to move to it. Like WhatsApp, WeChat is available for a lot of devices.

Kik is what comes to your mind when you think of WhatsApp alternatives. With a growing user-base of over 30-million users, Kik does sound promising but the migration isn’t still full-fledged. Again, cross-platform compatibility works just good along with a seamless and interesting design on the UI. Unlike WhatsApp on iPhone, Kik is free. Yup, there we go!

I’ve been dabbling with eBuddy since the Java days of mobile phones and I really don’t have any complaints about them except the ads they show on Android screens. I don’t have much of an experience with XMS but it’s just a good platform to hold your conversations.

Hike is a new startup from India that does precisely what WhatsApp does. Interestingly, Hike also provides a way to message those who aren’t on Hike – for free ( with a cap of 100sms per month). This is an app you’ve got to have your eyes on as almost everything appears quite good.

Well, you saw this coming didn’t you? Viber isn’t a clean alternative to WhatsApp but if what you’re after is just a simple, free messaging platform, Viber could very well be a good choice. It doesn’t come with rich media things but hey, that’s now what Viber was made for.

7. iMessage
Contrary to popular belief, amongst iOS users, iMessage is still one of the most preferred way to communicate. It’s simple and easy to setup (but if you’re facing issues with iMessage, be sure to check out our coverage on that).

So those were the ones that I could think of. I’m sure there are many other veterans and up-coming alternatives. If you’ve got one of them, let us know in the comments!